I’ve now typed out the first few lines about five times, just to highlight it all and hit the backspace button. And I might do it again, unless this manages to find some sort of a flow I can get behind. I wasn’t fully sure what to write about for this From the Desk (FTD), and I’m almost still not. All semester, I looked forward to this issue, but now it’s like every potential topic I could write about has disappeared. I went through so many different possibilities, and nothing is sticking anymore.
My friends know me for usually being outspoken on things that stand out to me, even if mundane, but having an open canvas now to fill on my own without a direction has left me a little lost. Senior members of staff typically utilize their FTD writing opportunity for a heartfelt goodbye piece that never misses its mark, but for me, that’ll be for the next volume of The Fordham Ram. So what do I write for this one?
What is there that won’t come up in a later opinion budget, or that isn’t already written? “Something I’m passionate about,” so maybe writing a FTD is having a conversation with myself about my biggest fear out loud on a Google Doc through the sound of my fingertips hitting keys.
It’s failure. I’ve put it out there, now. I have a crippling fear of failure. Which, of course, makes no sense. I know it doesn’t, but that doesn’t change anything. “Don’t let perfect get in the way of good” is a phrase used often, and I hate it. I hate it not because it’s a flawed piece of advice, but because it’s such an easy thing to say. Anything is, really, but it simplifies an overbearingly huge part of my life into a little motivational quote that brushes over the complexity of what it means to always meet the standard of perfection. I don’t want good, I never have; I equate good and perfect in my eyes. I want to meet myself at a certain point, potentially marked as unattainable; I want to see myself there, and until I do, I simply will avoid the task at hand if I have to, until I can’t anymore.
I know how wrong that sounds, but it’s not about how right or wrong I am for thinking in this way. It’s the fact that it’s bigger than a habit or mindset — it’s the dictator of my life beyond my immediate awareness. I am aware, however, of the issues it creates and how much of a barrier this fear is for me. I’m afraid of asking for help. I give up on hobbies I’m not immediately able to “be good at.” I dread peer reviews in class. I’m not able to write as much as I’d like to. The standard of perfection isn’t to be perfect, it’s to be impossible, and funnily enough, it doesn’t work with my goals; it works against them. Perfection has its own means, and prioritizing the unattainable means compromising my own goals.
Truth be told, what this impacts more than anything is my writing. I grew up loving reading and writing for fun. It was my hobby; whether to create stories or pour my heart out, a pen and paper (or my notes app) was the outlet I turned to. However, I never touched poetry. I was afraid of it, having been introduced to it in elementary and middle school and seeing so many incredible works from the past. Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath. It all seemed perfect, every word and every line break purposeful. A single alteration, whether it be switching a word for a synonym or choosing to create a line break elsewhere, would disrupt the flow created by their mind and hands. So I was intimidated in the face of perfection. My fundamental belief was that poetry was too hard, and therefore, I could never write it. I’d be shaming all the poems that came before if I even thought to write anything in their form.
I only started writing poetry two years ago, and that’s also when I stopped, later that year. I couldn’t place where exactly this pause came in, but I wish I could speak of it in the past tense. I wish I could talk about how I conquered my greatest fear and put it behind me, allowing myself to move forward and grow, both as a person and as a writer. I wish I could say I’ve started writing more consistently, exploring new styles and genres and forms.
It feels wrong to call myself a writer when I haven’t given it time in so long. The longer I wait, the scarier it is to go back. I have my old writing as a standard, which is arguably worse than before, when it was other people and their writing. This time it’s mine. Why can’t I write like I did before? Why can’t I do better? It’s something I prefer not to give much thought to anymore. Maybe if I don’t think about it, it’s still a pending thought, and I won’t consider it a failure. Right? Right.
My Composition II professor first said it to me. “Don’t let perfect get in the way of good,” when my midterm paper had been a month late at that point, and it had been harder to write every day that passed. It’s funny how I’d rather fail in the “real world” than force myself to bullshit an essay for the sake of getting it in. My professor (an angel, honestly) understood and gave me an example of a colleague of his who improved his writing simply through consistency, not starting out with so much remarkable talent. Meanwhile, writing only in bursts of inspiration that aren’t consistent prevents you from growing; you’re stuck at the same point with your abilities for as long as you’ll let yourself.
It’s an ongoing journey of dismantling this part of my mind. The only thing we all need to remember is that the illusion of perfection is not meant to be your friend; it is just that: an illusion. And progression without failure is useless, because you can’t truly win unless you know what it’s like to lose. After all, you only learn how to get up once you’ve fallen down.
Haniyyah Usmani, FCRH ’27, is a psychology major from the Bronx, New York.
